Don't follow your heart

John Roberts

Journal-Advocate religion columnist

Posted:
05/10/2013 11:17:22 AM MDT

John Roberts Journal-Advocate religion columnist

I frequently hear it offered as life guidance from advice columnists, from talk show hosts, and from popular self-help gurus: "Just follow your heart, and it will all be okay!" This counsel is so popular, and so widely followed, that one has to wonder where all our problems are coming from. So many are following their hearts — and we're told that if we do that, "it will be okay!" — it's a mystery why so much is obviously not okay with us.

Some say that the real problem is that we're not following our hearts closely enough, not paying enough attention to what our hearts are really telling us. If we would just get in better touch with our hearts, and listen more closely, then it will be okay. So, we buy books, and listen to CD's, and join online groups to help us enhance our heart-following skill.

And still, nothing changes.

The problem is not in how well we attend to our hearts' direction, but rather in trying to follow our hearts at all. In point of fact, our hearts are terrible guides. In our hearts we harbor all sorts of fears and wounds, pain and bitterness, all of which render our hearts quite incapable of charting a sure course for our lives. Moreover, beyond our hearts' obvious woundedness, don't forget our sinful natural condition. Jesus said that the unregenerate heart is the source of "evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" which "defile a person" (Matthew 15:19-20).

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All of us know people who are in all kinds of trouble precisely because they "followed their heart." How many marriages do you know that were destroyed because one spouse — or both — "followed their heart" into the arms and beds of another person? How many lives have been shattered because someone "followed his heart" into an unholy desire for wealth that led to dishonesty, deception and crime? Almost every wounded marriage, broken life and shattered family I have ever worked with started down the road to ruin when somebody started to "follow their heart."

God got it right when He told Jeremiah, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). Don't — I plead with you! — don't follow your heart.

Follow Jesus instead. He said, "If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me" (Luke 9:23). Jesus won't lead you into a broken marriage or a failed relationship; but your heart might. Jesus won't lead you into shady business practices that could cost you your home or your family or even your freedom; but your heart might. Jesus won't lead you into sexual sin that could destroy your life; but your heart might.

Don't follow your heart. Follow Jesus.

Be sure you remember what following Jesus always requires. He said it Himself in the verse we just read. To follow Him involves deciding daily to deny yourself, and die to your own wishes and wants. And that means saying a resolute "No!" to your own heart, so that you may say a firm "Yes!" to Jesus.

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